Training

[Are you thinking about doing Immersion or TT but money is an issue? Please let us know–we can work with you. Email Emma directly at emma@southmountainyoga.com.]

South Mountain Yoga offers two training programs: Immersion and Teacher Training. The SMY Immersion is for any student looking to delve more deeply into yoga. It is also a pre-requisite for entering the SMY Teacher Training program–the Immersion’s 45 contact hours are part of the Teacher Training.

About the SMY Immersion

Earlybird Discount expires 3/15!

What’s an Immersion?

The SMY Yoga Immersion is 45-hour program designed to take you deeper into your yoga practice, exploring yoga history, philosophy, and anatomy in an intensive format that allows you to truly steep in the teachings. It is organized so that you can fit it into your busy schedule–the program consists of five weekends over four months, starting in April 2018 at SMY. Registration closes 3/30/2018–you must make payment (or in the case of payment plan, your first payment) by that date.

Note the Immersion Pre-Requisite: you must complete at least ten public yoga classes with lead Teacher Trainer Emma Magenta before the program starts. In this way you get to know her and she gets to know you before training.

Who can participate?

People who love yoga and want to know more! Our only other prerequisite for the Immersion is that you take at least 10 classes with lead trainer Emma Magenta before the program starts. This is so that you get a good feel for her teaching. We suggest that you prepare by keeping a regular practice of one or two classes a week in the months leading up to the Immersion.

The Immersion is a prerequisite to the SMY Teacher Training Program, but it is open to the public–there’s no obligation to continue on to Teacher Training when you’re done.

What’s on the menu? (What are we gonna be doing?)

Sessions alternate between more up-tempo periods of asana practice and more contemplative periods of group discussion, meditation, and pranayama. Specifically, we’ll be exploring the following:

Asana: Refinement all the poses on SMY’s Basic Syllabus and fuller exploration of poses on the Intermediate SyllabusAnatomy: Important bones, bony landmarks, and muscles; energetic anatomy like cakras and nadisBiomechanics: Evolutionary foundations of biomechanical alignment, how to practice it in yoga poses and take it off your matYoga History: Where does yoga come from? Who invented it? How did it evolve over time?Yoga Philosophy: The major ideas that have evolved over the history of yoga and how they might apply to your life as a modern Hatha yogi.

What am I gonna get out of it?

You’ll leave the Immersion with:

greater ease and delight in your body

new insights into your place in the world, your relationships, and your life’s journey

a fuller understanding of yoga’s history, philosophy, and diversity

new friends who share your interests and support your growth

When is it happening?

REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN. REGISTRATION CLOSES ON 3/30/18. YOU MUST MAKE YOUR FIRST PAYMENT BY THAT DATE.

What do people say about the program?

“Before immersion, I was typically attending medium level classes with the occasional advanced class. I was confident. But still lacked a lot of attention to detail. And had no grounding on the history of yoga. And thought of it more along the lines of a physical activity. And less about it from a “mindfulness” perspective. Immersion changed all of that. It’s been over a year since I took the course, and to this day, I am paying attention to the smallest details for most asana – the ribs, this finger, that forearm, the slight tilt of the pelvis, etc. I feel like my repertoire of asana is much greater now. It makes my home practice that much more enjoyable. And keeps it fresh because I have so many more asana to choose from. I meditate more often these days – and have now made that an integral part of my practice. I have a deeper appreciation now for where Yoga came from. And a deeper understanding of the history. A rich history. And now the Bhagavad Gita sits on my book shelf. I read it after I completed the immersion – and took a number of life lessons away from that as well. Highly recommended.”

“If you love yoga and want to know everything you can about its origins and its place in Indian cultural and spiritual history, than you will love the immersion at SMY. Emma creates a very warm and welcoming group experience, and the right blend of didactic and experiential learning. You will be amazed at how much more grounded and confident you will feel in yogic practices and in your body. You will feel connected to a constellation of knowledge that will give you a real foundation in yoga and its history and present day manifestation.”

~ Lorraine C

Immersion Pricing

Note that this pricing is for the Immersion only–scroll down for pricing on Teacher Training.

Early Bird Rate: $799

Regular Rate: $899

Payment Plan: $239/mo

Audit: If you have already completed an Immersion at SMY, you are welcome to audit individual weekends for a greatly reduced rate. Please contact us to make arrangements.

SMY Teacher Training Program consists of two parts…

A 45-hour Yoga Immersion to drench you in yoga practice, biomechanics, anatomy, and history (Only interested in the Immersion? Check it out here.)

A further 14 weekends of study purely focussed on learning how to teach
The entire program (Immersion and Teacher Training) consists of 19 weekends (9 hours each weekend) from April 2018 – May 2019. Graduation is in June 2019.

Note the YTT Pre-Requisite: you must complete the South Mountain Yoga Immersion before Teacher Training.

Our Credentials

South Mountain Yoga’s Yoga Teacher Training program is registered with Yoga Alliance, the largest national trade association for yoga teachers. This means that graduates of our TT are eligible to apply to Yoga Alliance for an RYT (Registered Yoga Teacher) designation. Yoga Alliance requires 200-hour Yoga Teacher Trainings to include 180 contact hours.

SMY YTT total hours: 200

180 of those hours are contact hours.

The remaining 20 hours are homework hours. (May be more than 20 depending on how fast you work or read!)

Approximately 30 of those 180 contact hours are with Mentors or guest teachers

Therefore around 150 of the contact hours are with the Lead Trainer (far exceeding the Yoga Alliance requirement of 65 hours with the Lead Trainer)

Yoga Alliance does not require an Immersion, but of those 180 contact hours, 45 of them are the Immersion, where you are learning about YOGA, rather than learning how to TEACH yoga.

Learn how to…

Teach yoga: share what you love in a way that allows others to discover the joy of yoga

Cultivate and occupy sacred space: Create an environment that is physically and energetically conducive to transformation, and learn how to navigate that environment in a way that supports your teaching

Take the seat of the teacher: Cultivate confidence and authenticity in your teaching

Plan sequences: Plan class sequences for a variety of levels and types of classes (including pre/post natal and restorative), take a deeper look at the South Mountain Yoga syllabi

Alter your classes to serve pre- and post-natal students

Instruct according to healthy biomechanical alignment principles: Learn the human evolutionary history that informs how we move, and techniques for how to honor our evolutionary inheritance in poses

Set a context for your class: Conceive, develop and skillfully deliver themes that inspire your students

See as a yoga teacher sees: observe common misalignments and triage what must be adjusted

Make adjustments: Physical & verbal enhancements to poses

Properly pronounce pose names: Understand the names of poses and what they reveal

Understand yoga history: know the facts about yoga’s origins and share it with your classes in a way that is meaningful

Gain literacy in yoga texts: know the key texts and philosophies in yoga history

Take the next step: Get a job, know your rights as an employee

Our Faculty

SMY’s Immersion and Teacher Training programs are led by SMY Director Emma Magenta along with members of our teaching staff you may already know from weekly classes. SMY also welcomes two additional teachers to our faculty:

Sanskrit with Greg Yamada. Gregholds a BA in Traditional Eastern Arts with a concentration in Yoga and a minor in Sanskrit from Naropa University. He is a student of Dr. Douglas Brooks and Rajanaka Yoga. He has made pilgrimage to Mount Kailas in Tibet and has lived in Madurai, South India where he studied Tamil and Sanskrit and visited many of the great temples of Tamil Nadu. He is interested in the great treasure house that is Indian mythology and how those myths colocate and collaborate with temple architecture, ritual, and forms of the divine.

Prenatal Yoga with Jennifer Pettit. Jen has been devoted to the study of yoga for more than twenty years. Her teaching is steeped in the personal experiences of yoga through pregnancy and motherhood. Jennifer has taught both prenatal and postpartum yoga for over 14 years and runs teacher trainings in fertility, prenatal and postpartum yoga- and continues to specialize in working with the therapeutic benefits of yoga for women’s health and wellbeing.

Program Includes

172 contact hours of group teacher training over 19 weekends (and one final exam review)

8 additional contact hours in 4 small group mentoring sessions with the seasoned teachers of SMY

UNLIMITED FREE CLASSES AT SMY for the duration of Teacher Training (but not during Immersion). This is a value of almost $1000!

The SMY Curriculum

The SMY Teacher Training Manual

Program Requirements

Program Pre-Requisite:The prerequisite for the South Mountain Yoga Teacher Training is the SMY Immersion (see above for more info).

Here’s a short summary of the program requirements to receive your SMY teaching Certificate, and thus apply for RYT status from Yoga Alliance:

Required Texts

All texts below can be found on Amazon.com, except Ganesha Goes to Lunch, which is only intermittently available on Amazon. Here’s a link to an Amazon “Wish List” where you can purchase any of these texts: http://a.co/4Xt8zhh. Wondering about which ones to buy first? My advice is to focus on having the following: Yoga Resource Practice Manual by Darren Rhodes, Light on Yoga by BKS Iyengar, and The Anatomy Coloring Book, 4th Edition by Wynn Kapit.

General

South Mountain Yoga Studio Curriculum, Emma Magenta, provided at the beginning of Training

Dates/Hours

Dates and hours of small group mentoring sessions to be determined during first weekend together.

TT Dates:

[Remember–you must complete the Immersion before you start TT, and the next Immersion starts April 6, 2018. Details on it above.]

August 3-5, 2018
August 24-26, 2018
September 14-16, 2018
October 5-7, 2018
October 26-28, 2018
November 16-18, 2018
December 7-9, 2018
January 11-13, 2019
February 1-3, 2019
February 22-24, 2019
March 15-17, 2019
April 5-7, 2019
April 26-28, 2019
May 17-19, 2019
Final Exam Review/Graduation Party: June 15, 2019